


milk, Nectar, and blood

by madeinessos



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/M, Groping, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Mommy Issues, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:28:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25020043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos
Summary: Balem’s blood sits on his tongue, as warm and tart and familiar as all the other things that his mother used to nourish him with: the milk from her breasts, and the Nectar that she’d made and eventually refined from cattle, and her own name of Abrasax.Mother’s milk. Mother’s Nectar. Mother’s blood.
Relationships: Balem Abrasax/Jupiter Jones
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	milk, Nectar, and blood

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt ‘Almost Porny, But Not’ in Banned Together Bingo 2020.

There is blood in his mouth. His muscles ache, the throbs and twinges lapping up his body like a long-lost lover. And her face, ah, her inescapable face, it looms far above him.

That face as old as time.

That face which has wrought the word _beauty_ into existence.

Balem has found himself in this same position before, with her, and thinking these same thoughts. Familiar. Familiar. Familiar. Her face. No beginning and no end. She told him about this a very long time ago, yet however much time has passed, whatever which way the universe folds and refolds itself, his mother always turns out to be right. So when her sweat-shiny fingers tightened around the steel rod and when it landed on him with that familiar forceful anger, Balem almost smiled.

He contented himself with crying out in pain.

She hits him again. The rod burns along his body. Warms his thoughts, making them swirl.

And trickle.

Like that rich creamy soup Mother used to share with him during languid holy day mornings in her alcazar, she reclining on her daybed and Balem on his favourite cushion across from her.

Balem trembles. Sweat drips off the tip of his nose.

Mother, rumpled in her bedrobe, no sheave in hand, a smile on her lips as she told him to taste the soup: it had the heart of some exotic red meat. Balem still remembers. Mother telling him during his first Harvest that, simply put, the universe is nothing but burning into life and burning out to a quiet rest.

She hits him a third time, and the burn shudders through him, lightning through his cells like a Nectar bath has not felt in a very long time, and Balem gasps out.

His mother, she really is alive in this very moment. Balem can feel it.

Come back to taunt him. Come back to flex her might in his face. It might be one of her crueller games, after all, her change of heart in her later years. One of her crueller tests for him. And now here she is again. No beginning and no end when it comes to her – Balem himself, however, would’ve had no beginning without her. He came from her. He is of her genes. Her only primary heir that she carried in her body. She always told him these things as she caressed him from cheekbone to bottom lip, from chin to throat, her ringed fingers always cool, her half-smile warmer than her void-dark eyes.

And right now she’s looking at him with those same eyes.

Balem inhales sharply. He doesn’t spit out the blood. It sits on his tongue, as warm and tart and familiar as all the other things that his mother used to nourish him with: the milk from her breasts, and the Nectar that she’d made and eventually refined from cattle, and her own name of Abrasax.

Mother’s milk. Mother’s Nectar. Mother’s blood.

And there are moments when Balem actually misses her. So he doesn’t spit out his blood, doesn’t swipe at his split lip. His blood came from her, too.

She tosses the rod to the floor.

The clang shakes his head. Recalibrates his surroundings.

The ruptured grav hull. The gas and the hurricanes. The firepower of his agents fighting the Aegis.

His refinery, his inheritance from Mother and that which makes his universe, crashing all around him in fire and lightning.

And Jupiter Jones. His mother’s Recurrence. His mother’s same exact genes coalescing in the same exact order in this Terrsie child. His mother’s face and voice.

Balem pushes himself up on his elbows. “Is this familiar to you,” he rasps out, “as it is for me, Mother? Does some part of you remember? I still remember. I remember what you said.”

Jupiter pins him with a hard look. “I am not your damn mother.”

Liar.

The liar has sounded just like his mother just now. Not the accent or the cadence, perhaps, but all the other things. That simmering anger. That shadow of a snarl. That tone which used to always make Balem feel like such a child despite his collection of millennia, especially in those later years when Mother took to prolonging her wrinkles, like a new favourite accessory.

*

That tone.

“Mother –”

*

That tone which she also used early in his life, when he had barely reached his first millennium and was still her only primary heir. How arrogant he was then. All of Mother’s intelligence combined with all of his youthful foolishness.

He needed to be taught a lesson to save him from himself, Mother had said earlier as she gestured at her favourite Splicer, a woman dealing with lycantants. All matter in the universe experience burning, burning into life or burning out to a quiet rest or that thing in between; that was what his mother had added as she coldly smiled at the geneprint of a pack of lycantants.

“Did you say something, Balem? Say that again, won’t you?”

Mother’s face loomed above him, her skin warm-toned and limned by the reddish gold lights pouring in from the arched window of the Jupiter refinery. Her right temple leaning against two of her fingers and her thumb idly brushing circles on her cheek. Her dark hair falling in wide curls, lost to the black velvet cloaking her shoulders. Bodice of black lace, a V of warm skin bared almost navel-deep. Hanging between the V were rubies, gleaming like crystalised blood.

Balem had to drag his eyes from the rubies to Mother’s piercing gaze. Dark as the void, with the glint of distant stars. As a child he’d always feared that Mother’s gaze might swallow him back. Pull him down from his status as her primary heir. Cease loving him even as he stayed true in his devotion. After all, she had discarded many of her other children from favoured positions before.

Mother raised her eyebrows. “Well?”

Beauty has always meant Mother’s face. Beauty has always meant the stirrings of awe and terror in Balem’s gut. Breathtaking.

Kalique and Titus never knew how Mother was like then, when she was younger, when her ambition for the business still burned hotter than the hottest star, when her fierce will was not yet mellowed by the passing millennia.

“Mother –”

Balem still remembers how it first felt, the newly carved thirst in his throat.

“Mother,” he rasped out. “I’m – very sorry. Wrong. I was – wrong.”

A smile flitted across Mother’s face. “I can’t hear you, my love. This is what happens when you exhibit unbelievable disrespect towards me. Mother gives, and Mother takes. Best remember that.” She shifted on the floating chaise lounge, crossed her legs. Her feet, in jewelled and tasselled boots, threw no shadows on the floor. Her rubies brushed against the almost visible curve of her breast. “Come closer, then, let me see how deep the bite is. Closer I said, closer. There we are. Now, Balem. Say that again.”

*

Another crash. The sounds of firepower and ruin.

Balem blinks the sweat from his eyes.

Ah. His mother’s Recurrence. Jupiter.

She’s scowling at him. Her lips are moving. They’re bare, unpainted.

Mother preferred the deep red of Zalintyre roses, of rubies.

Jupiter kicks the rod. Balem blinks again.

She doesn’t loom that far above him, this Jupiter. She’s closer to the ground. She is standing firm on the ground. The toes of her boots are level with Balem’s mouth.

Her boots, unadorned like her lips.

“Jupiter,” he murmurs. A name of some Terrsie god. A name which amused Mother during one of her Skims and so took it to name one of her estates, his inheritance. And now it’s also the name of her Recurrence.

Her Recurrence who came from her beloved Earth. Whom she wrote into her will despite bestowing Earth as part of his inheritance.

Is this one of Mother’s games?

“Stalin’s fucking balls, you’re still – did you even hear a word I said? And you know you’ve been whispering to yourself, right? And for the hundredth time I am not your goddamn mo –”

There’s a loud metallic groan. The floor tilts with a shriek, sharply, and Jupiter yells, and the whole pathway starts collapsing.

Balem grabs at a handrail. Parts and pieces of the pathway skid past him, some knocking into him before plunging far down below, into the fires. His cloak snaps at his calves. Ahead of him, desperately holding on to a steel beam, Jupiter is screaming.

He can still reach her.

Balem lunges for her feet. This makes her scream even more, the sound tearing out of her throat that he can almost feel it in his own.

“Get off me, get off, get off!”

She tries to dislodge him, but Balem holds on.

His sweaty cheek clings to her boots. Balem tightens his grip on her ankles, pours all the force of his age in this moment, and then starts to pull himself up.

Up along her legs, which are harder than Mother’s.

Up along her thighs, which are firmer than Mother’s.

And Jupiter is yelling, arm muscles taut, straining to keep her own hold on the steel beam.

Balem pauses, panting against her madly clenching belly. Through the plain black tank top her scent tickles his nose. It’s gentler than Mother’s; the bite of the Nectar is absent. Mother without the thick musk of thousands of years. Of power.

The blood from his lip has been smeared on her tank top. He wants to rip the fabric. Rubies brushing her navel.

“I’ll let go!” she shouts at him.

Balem’s arms tense around her waist. He tilts his face and finds that she has squeezed her eyes shut. The sweat on her face shines with the reddish gold of the fires around them.

“I’ll let go!” Jupiter shouts. “We’ll fall, I mean it, I don’t care, we’ll both fall!”

Balem doesn’t dare taunt her at this moment. She’s already shot him earlier, pulling the trigger just to spite him.

He just drags himself up again. His nose brushing across inches of this gentler scent, inches of sweetly damp, maddeningly thin fabric; the waves of her heaving chest almost drowning him; her back muscles rippling under his grasping hands; the heat of her body becoming the heat of his body, the bite of the Nectar on him grazing along her unblemished body, until he reaches the wild wet throbbing of her pulse, until his eyes are level with her throat.

Jupiter’s eyes snap open – void dark, with the sheen of his long-ago youthful foolishness – and she gasps. Her legs instinctively tighten around him.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god –”

This close he can smell Mother’s favourite wine on her breath. Her favourite roses. He can smell Mother’s favourite bath oils and scented holy candles on the clench of her jaw. Titus’ and Kalique’s respective machinations.

His siblings coalescing in her body.

Balem gnashes his teeth.

Then he parts his lips and presses them on her.

When Jupiter cries out the sound, throaty and familiar from long ago, now throbs with disbelief and shock. The steel beam groans between her fists. Her thighs choke his torso, her knee digs into his ribs. And Balem keeps smearing the rest of his blood on her slick warm skin, rubies glimmering along her collarbones.

Her eyes are half-closed. Half-closed from fear of the fires over which they’re dangling, but brave enough to be half-open too, from wariness of him. “You’re just as human as I am,” Jupiter spits out. Breathless. “I’ll let go and we’ll both fall and you’ll never harm my family or anyone on Earth.” The sheen on her eyes brims over and slides down her cheek. Her voice cracking, “I mean it. Don’t think I won’t, I mean it.”

A drop of sweat-tear-sheen quivers on the tip of her chin.

And falls the shortest of distances on to Balem’s wounded lip.

To live is to consume; Mother taught him that.

He bares his teeth, slightly. Slithers his hand from her spine to her nape. And whispers against her chin, “Let go, then.”

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> You're welcome to suggest if I should edit or add tags. :D


End file.
